Soft Crack

It's Thursday, March 31st 2011 and welcome to Episode 118 of TechTalk4Teachers, I'm Tom Grissom. We are a little past mid-way point through the spring semester here at EIU and faculty and students are busily working their way through their courses. Many educators are constantly on the lookout for new methods to be a more effective teacher and thanks to the advances in technology you do not have to look far these days. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (9 minutes 51 seconds) There has recently been a crescendo of interest growing in education circles regarding a former TechTalk4Teachers Pick of the Week. This former pick has received new funding and is helping students from all around the world learn new things by simply watching YouTube videos and all for free. I'm going to “flip” the format of todays show and you will see why in just a moment. Since I began TechTalk4Teachers I have made the Horizon Report a yearly technology pick and I have not yet had the opportunity ...

It’s Monday, February 28th, 2011 and welcome to episode 117 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. A short month this month but an eventful one for the human race none the less, more on that later in the show. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (28 minutes 45 seconds) This month I had the honor of speaking at the opening session of the Students Involved with Technology Conference held here at Eastern Illinois University. This conference is held yearly in Illinois and also has concurrent conferences in other areas of the State for K12 students. In the past this conference was held in the Bloomington/Normal area and this was the first time to my knowledge that the event was held at EIU. The conference is setup by students for students and gives K12 students the opportunity to share their knowledge and skills with one another. We had several volunteer student presenters present on various technology topics as well as some adult experts presenting on topics such as making music on your ...

It’s Monday January 31st, 2011 and welcome to episode 116 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. Another month has gone by since the last podcast and the world has changed once again. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (10 minutes 10 seconds) This past month has witnessed protests in Tunisia and Egypt in attempts to oust the current dictatorial governments. Social media has played a huge role in these protests, so much so that the government of Egypt has cut-off cell phone and Internet service in the country in an attempt to disrupt protestors. Organizers of the protests were using Facebook and Twitter prior to the Internet cutoff to coordinate protests, so, the government made the decision to turn off the Internet switch. As of the time of this podcast some cell phone coverage has been restored but there is still no Internet access in Egypt. This is a very fluid situation and it is unclear whether President Mubarak will remain as the leader of Egypt as of the time of this posting. Tun...

It’s Friday, December 31st, 2010 and welcome to episode 115 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. It’s the last day of the year and the last day of the first decade of the 21st Century. We have heard a lot about the 21st Century education over the past decade and now perhaps we can finally put to bed the rhetoric of what skills a 21st Century educator should possess. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (16 minutes 22 seconds) Looking back over the past ten years has proven to be just as exciting as the decade of the 1990’s when the public Internet was born. The 1990’s witnessed a blistering pace of innovation as the .com boom got into full swing. The 2000’s have enjoyed an equal dose of innovation and I am sure we will see similar growth and innovations over the coming decade. Plain and simple, the number one skill a person needs to have in this day and age is the ability to adapt to change because change is guaranteed to happen. In order to adapt we need to know how to learn, un-learn ...

It’s Tuesday, November 30th, 2010 and welcome to episode 114 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. We are back from a week long Thanksgiving break where I was lucky enough to take a technology holiday and managed to have a solid week of no online activities for the first time since I can remember. I hope those of you in the U.S. also had an enjoyable Thanksgiving break and found some time to reflect on all the blessings we have as Americans. One of those blessings for me is a great public education. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (10 minutes 11 seconds) It has been a very busy November here in our college as we are ¾ of the way through the fall semester. We also had our NCATE Accreditation site visit this month that involved all teacher education faculty, staff, and students and we are now awaiting the official report. Accreditation is very important for teacher education programs as it provides mechanisms for measuring and assuring quality programs that benefit our students. As th...

It’s Thursday October 28th, 2010 and welcome to episode 113 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom and I’m Adam Dodge. With me today in the studio is Adam Dodge who is here to talk more about Information Technology security. Back in August we invited Adam to talk about the importance of userids and strong passwords. Since October is Cyber Security Awareness month I thought we would invite Adam back for more information about protecting all of the IT resources we all come to rely upon daily. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (25 minutes 11 seconds) Links mentioned in this episode: Antiphishing Working Group - http://www.antiphishing.org OnGuardOnline - www.onguardonline.gov National Cyber Security Alliance - www.staysafeonline.org Facebook Security - www.facebook.com/security Campus Downloading - www.campusdownloading.com Technology Pick of the Week For my Technology Pick of the Week this week I am recommending that you take a look at a new feature in Google Docs, in particular Google sp...

It's Thursday, September 30, 2010 and welcome to episode 112 of TechTalk4Teachers, I'm Tom Grissom and I'm Loren Lindgren. Welcome Loren. We have a guest today in the studio. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (18 minutes 14 seconds) Tom: Loren is a graduate student here at the ITC. So, I wanted to invite Loren in and talk a little bit about podcasting. He had expressed in interest in podcasting so I thought well, let’s just do a live show here. I also have my undergrad class, what we call our Teaching and Learning with Technologies in Classrooms class and we’re doing some podcasting in there as well. So, I thought I would just introduce some of the equipment and just bounce some of the questions, because I believe this is your first experience with podcasting. Tom: Okay. And I’m setup probably a little bit differently. I’m certainly setup differently than whenever I started this, three or four years ago. Back when I started this, I was literally just using a regular compute...

It’s Tuesday August 31st, 2010 and welcome to episode 111 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. We’re Back! It is back-to-school time here at EIU and we have survived the first full week. Schools across America are going through the annual ritual of back-to-school activities as students once again enter classrooms. Faculty are going over their syllabi with students. Whether you are at a K-12 school or at a college or university you are most likely faced with another ritual of obtaining userid(s) and password(s) for the new school year. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (30 minutes 23 seconds) Userids and passwords are literally the keys to the kingdom when it comes to accessing electronic resources. Your userid and password is the only thing that stands between you and the often sensitive and confidential information available electronically. It seems like one of the simplest of things to deal with but because of the importance of userids and passwords I thought it would be valuable t...